One Life to Live News & Gossip
News for the week of 13-Jun-2009
Kassie DePaiva (Blair) has been on OLTL long enough to garner attention for her outstanding performance on Live Week, and receive a sound snubbing out of the Emmys. She’s tried to carve out real moments between two different Todd Mannings, and suffered more than her share of slings and arrows in their abusive relationship. Through it all, DePaiva’s maintained she more about being a mom, a wife, a friend, even an entertainer, than being an actress and singer. She can do it all, as fans can readily attest, but doing it all is the least of her worries. “What my life is is being around people like my family and friends who I love and enjoy and helping them to be better,” she explained to Damon L. Jacobs, in his May 11th interview of her. “And allowing them to love me so I can do good things.” Doing good things as an actress portraying Blair hasn’t always translated well on-screen. There have been times she’s felt frustrated, downright insulted, yes insulted. Even though Blair is a character, Blair is the character fully embodied and realized by DePaiva. So when Blair’s mistreated, DePaiva has felt the pain. Take the time John made love to Blair, fell asleep and dreamt of Marty going, “Come on John, Blair? Can’t you do any better than that?” That made DePaiva feel “dirty” inside on the drive home. “I mean, that’s awful to have a man dream of another woman while he’s … you know. I mean it makes for good soap opera. But that’s something where I just went ‘Really? Did it have to be me?’ But everything is heightened, everything is fantasy, I try to keep a good perspective on it.” Damon L. Jacobs has been busy in the last few months interviewing soap stars who signed up for SoapNet’s last “Rock the Soap Cruise” with fans, from Elizabeth Hendrickson (Chloe, Y&R; ex-Frankie/Maggie, AMC) to Van Hansis (Luke, ATWT).
According to Nelson Branco’s June 8th “Nelson Ratings” on TV Guide-Canada, Kyle and Fish will explore their homosexual liaison back in college. Reportedly, the gayer-than-gay gossip queen, Perez Hilton, is all fired up for the man-on-man hookup. … ‘Cause heaven help you, honey, if you aren’t.
While John-Paul Lavoisier (Rex) admitted that his is “the dumbest character in daytime,” he still found a way to explain why Rex falls for Stacy’s con again and again, when he used to be a con himself. That’s the point, Lavoisier said, her con artist ways have taken him back to his, and it’s a thrill for the both of them. “They go to the country club and steal and lie and Rex gets a rush out of it. They break in through different names, they sign everything to someone else’s room, and they’re drinking. He gets this fake sense of happiness with someone who he sees as just a ‘there for you’ type of person. Stacy pushes all the right buttons, leading to them to almost have sex, but they get caught by the country club people. It’s not a Rex-to-Stacy-moment, it’s a boy-to-girl moment.” Alrighty then. –Soap Opera Weekly
Matt Walton (ex-Detective Price, circa 2007) returns to OLTL August 6th as a new lawyerly character named Elijah, quite possibly as Tea’s new boyfriend. Walton has done TV appearances on Law & Order, Rescue Me, Cashmere Mafia and even AMC and GL. Elijah takes on Todd’s and another couple’s case, with shocking results.
Grammy-winning singer and former member of the Commodores, Lionel Richie, has taped a special performance for OLTL last week, which will appear later next month. He sang “Just Go.”
We’ve all heard the rumors about Kassie DePaiva’s (Blair) husband James (ex-Max), and how he’d made himself so unpleasant to be around in the studio that it almost came as a relief when TPTB finally let him go. His once-popular character suffered for the decline, which came at the hands of those PTB. Believe it or not, the rumors were mostly on point, as writer Damon L. Jacobs learned in his two-part, May 28-29th interview with the actor/director. The interview is an interesting, compelling and brutally honest read about a people-pleaser who turned to drugs, and then to acting and, then, the beginning of the end of his downfall at OLTL. DePaiva doesn’t hold back on his then-animosity toward a lot of people he thought believed in him, as well as those in charge who let his character languish on the backburner or as a stepping stone to other, more favored characters. The following paragraph is quite telling, prompted by Jacobs’ question as to whether DePaiva would do anything over again: “I would have been divorced a lot sooner. I would have been out of a relationship that was not healthy. I wouldn’t have stayed on One Life to Live. I would not have come back to One LIfe to Live. That was all ego. Everyone was saying horrible things about me when I left. I kept hearing things about how much better my replacement was. I thought, geez, I thought these people were supposed to be my friends. But I really don’t know what I’d do differently. I mean, I have two phenomenal kids and an incredible wife, it’s hard to complain. Am I going to sit here and piss and moan that I didn’t have the acting career I always hoped to have? I know a lot of actors who had those careers and I’m a lot happier than they are. Having a great acting career doesn’t necessarily pay the bills.” It’s not as if he saw himself as fully recovered from those self-entitled tantrums, feeling mistreated, angry at the world, and unused. But he said he’s able to let go a lot better now.
Gossip for the week of 13-Jun-2009
As I was reading Damon L. Jacobs’ May 11th interview of Kassie DePaiva (Blair) and her not saying it was any sort of big deal to recast her in the role previously vacated by an Asian-American actress (Mia Korf), I began to wonder if the same would’ve been said had they recast Layla with someone white… or Dorian with someone black. That would never happen. And yet, nobody in daytime thinks twice of replacing an obviously Asian-looking character with a Caucasian one. We’re all supposed to be fine with that?!
Soap columnist Marlena De Lacroix surfaced on June 11th with a summer column to pan OLTL for its “rampant sexism, which has stained the show for the last few years, [and] continues to sabotage its overall quality.” De Lacroix had a big problem with Stacy conning Rex into feeling bad for her by having Stan punch her lights out, not to mention the romantic reunion between Todd and his punching bag, Tea. To her and many thinking soap fans, it’s all sick, sick stuff.
One Life to Live News & Gossip, Copyright © 2010 Carol Banks Weber. Published by SoapZone.com / Jeff Jungblut. No part of this page may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means (electronic, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Opinions expressed on this page are those of the author and may not be representative of SoapZone.com or its advertisers. Don't steal scoops.
